There is something in these modern times about the reporting of road accidents and the people who lose their lives that leaves you speechless. The standard rituals of mourning, a civic narrative, and even the silence stand out and convey a sense of deep helplessness. A report released recently by the Ministry of Road Transport says: 1,46,133 people were killed in road accidents in India in 2015, up from 1,39,671 in 2014; 400 road deaths take place every day on India’s roads, and nearly eight in 10 accidents were caused by drivers, with 62 per cent of those blamed on speeding.

Predictable responses

In fact, if I had to write a surreal or science fiction novel today, I would begin with road deaths and their reporting. There is little about the person who lost his or her life. He or she is anonymous. Before you can tell the reader how she died or who mourned her, the report has sanitised all that and moved onto the level of policy. Death is clothed in statistics which helps you sanitise the violence and blunt the anonymous meaninglessness of dying on a road. Even the chorus of response is predictable. A minister or a police commissioner interviewed by the reporter will only mourn the increase in casualties and promise instant action and remedy in the form of speed bumps, speed traps, ambulances and CCTVs to bring down such statistics.

I sometimes imagine how it would be to die this way and it scares me. I would no longer be a citizen. All I would get would be a nugget buried in a page: “Unidentified man hit by car. Driver escapes”. Road accidents show how no one cares about the high accident rates. Even the quantum of numbers generates little concern or poetry. Nothing captures our indifference to death more than a scenario of a hit-and-run accident. A person lies mangled on the tarmac and the car has raced away. There is no mourning, no remembrance but just the indifference of an impersonal event.

Road deaths also have a strange sense of unclassifiability. They are not epidemics caused by virus; they are not acts of god. Yet, in a demographic sense, they eliminate more people than war or development. I recall someone having said, “You cannot create a smart city till you eliminate road deaths. You cannot be smart till you outsmart the inevitability of death in a city”. In a way, road deaths can be an index of the way we look at civic life and the city.

The sad part in all this is that very few genuinely think of road deaths. They are often seen as isolated events when they are actually a collusion between engineering, poor policing, bad planning and poor civics. What is horrible is that our legislators also realise that a human life is worthless in India, which is also reflected in the laws.

Unless we create the multipronged idea of what a road is, we cannot change the civics of the city. A road is not just a physical entity, but is also a civic space; a way of life; a site for livelihood, and a commons for participation. An accident demolishes all these notions.

A road in the developing world is more than just a road. It is a way of life. Road users have to take into account hawkers, pedlars, beggars and even stray animals. One is reminded of acclaimed photographer Raghu Rai’s 1964 black and white photograph, “Traffic At Chawri Bazar, Delhi” which captures not only every strand of life in a city but also the plurality of transport and livelihood, and, most importantly, of give and take. Road accidents challenge “Chawri Bazar” as a way of life. When roads become a uniformity of grids, and speed becomes a dominant form of life, deaths become an outcome of such an attitude. We easily accept the outcome.

The road is an idea of public space we have lost. Technologically, it is the distance between two points. In today’s world, it no longer has a sense of place or context. There is an “indifference curve” of driving. Yet, in a sociological sense, a road is community. Psychologically, it spells freedom; a space where one misuses this to speed, indulge in drunken, reckless and dangerous behaviour, and even “serial killing”.

When discussing road deaths, one is confronted with a set of attitudes. When speed is the main criteria, one loses the citizenship of the road. Also, people in India often forget that the words “road” and “night shelter” are two names for the same place. In a homeless world, the road is also the residence of the poor migrant worker. Oddly, we spend more time naming and renaming roads after colourless VIPs. It is only when we start thinking of a road as a community of living that safety will not become an afterthought after every accident but a larger, wider civic concern. Road safety is very much a part of the sustainability of the city.

Above the law

Road deaths also introduce us to those who cause the accidents. First, there is the adolescent who kills but is too young to be punished; a minor who commits major crimes with impunity. Then there is the road rage maniac who kills out of envy, and out of rage that someone threatened his uncivil ego on the road. We also have the drunken socialite, executive or film actor who crushes people and expects the lawyer to prove that his driver did it. The law struggles to pin each one down. Then there is a special category above the law — the VIP’s son — who runs over other drivers to protect his masculinity. The road produces this menagerie of savage urban life who are not only a shame to the car brand they drive but also to the city they live in. Finally, there is the truck driver who runs over stray dogs as a part of daily ritual. For all of these people, there is very little difference between a precious life and an animal.

Everyone editorialises about road deaths but in each accident the message is clear. There is deep indifference to road deaths and there is a continuous devaluation of life. We need to break the nexus that seeks to protect the perpetrator and erase the victim. We need a new kind of civics to break through the impasse.

Shiv Visvanathan is Professor at Jindal Global Law School and Director of Centre for the Study of Knowledge Systems.